Once again, litter and shaggy grass becomes civic topic number one — a perennial favourite

It must be summer when not-so-young men’s fancy turns to talking about litter and city maintenance. I hate to sound like an old codger here, but do you know how many rounds of complaints bout this I have heard in my almost two decades of covering the city.

With stunning regularity, there are uprisings of grumbling about wheatfields growing on city boulevards, overflowing trash cans and the like. Pretty much always in the summer, when things grow more and there are people out and and about than usual.

I must be very unobservant, because the city doesn’t seem any dirtier to me than usual. We here in the east side have our usual complement of abandoned mattresses and furniture, no more, no less. The grass is growing to harvesting height on the boulevards, as I have seen it so many times before, especially in crunch years when money is tight.

And yet, we seem to have a squadron of people out saying it’s all a lot worse than it used to be.

May I acquaint you with some history, culled from the 1,000-plus stories on the news database with the words “Vancouver” and “litter” (which hit a high point in 2008, with 72 stories on same just in that year, though admittedly some involved kitty litter) or “Vancouver” and “poor maintenance” and a few other combos.